Yes, that’s #snom. As in, a snow monster just nom nom nommed all over our nation’s capital, leaving over two feet of snow in its wake.

Sure, it’s inconvenient. It’s expensive for the local government. And really, it’s detrimental to the productivity of our local businesses, schools, and government. But it’s just FUN.

Between last night and today I spent a fair bit of time in the snow, playing, exploring and just overall enjoying the largest snowstorm I’ve ever been in. This afternoon we even had a giant Alpha Kappa Psi (my co-ed professional business fraternity) snowball fight in the quad on AU’s campus. It was a blast. Anyway, for your viewing pleasure, here’s some pictures of the #SNOM–the great D.C. Blizzard of 2010.

I’m failing you, blog. As always, there’s simply too much to do! If only we could have, ya know, 26 or 28 hour days. That might make things a little easier.

Just a quick update tonight with a rapid-fire overview of what my weekend has been like. Friday and Saturday I devoted purely to Social Justice Camp DC, which was absolutely incredible. I met a ton of amazing people, learned a lot of amazing stuff and well, got inspired. But I really hate skimming over so much important information, so I’m going to do a great big write-up of the experience tomorrow or Wednesday and get that up here and out for all of yall to read. I’ll probably highlight a few of the causes I’m really excited to get involved with (probably this summer, when I have some more free time) and explain some of my own, personal, key takeaways from the (un)conference–I’ll explain the “unconference” part later too.

In addition, I got to spend some time with two of my best friends in the world who just recently moved back to D.C. In kind of an odd coincidence, they both moved away (one to Seattle, the other to Tampa, Florida) shortly before I left to go abroad. Now that I’m back in D.C., they’ve moved back as well! I couldn’t be happier about it. We had a great time hanging out and needless to say, I really missed them. I can say with 100% certainty they are going to make this semester much more fun and hopefully a little stressful than it might have been otherwise. Thanks guys, glad you’re back!

Finally, on my desk right now I’ve got no less than five post-its screaming at me with variations and extensions on my main to-do list. It’s long, diverse and about half-fun. Unfortunately some of the things on my list are pretty tedious: “update résumé”, “sort through Twitter favorites”, “finish AU merit awards profile”, “scholarship applications”… But others are pretty fun, things like: “evergreen column for The Eagle“, “make cookbook binder”, “write blog posts!” You get the idea.

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Today I’ve been relatively productive, and it’s been a fun day. I slept in a bit (yes, yes, I know–I promise I’ll get up and work out tomorrow), then went to our first rush event for my professional business fraternity, Alpha Kappa Psi. It was a bit odd, since I had to spent equal amounts of time meeting rushes and new brothers, since I still haven’t met everyone who joined while I was abroad! After that I biked downtown (biked about 13 miles today!) to meet my bestie Paul (the one who just moved back from Seattle) and our friend Michael at Eastern Market for lunch. We ate at Tortilla Cafe and it was amazing! I ordered an order of chips and guacamole for the three of us to split–it was $4 for guacamole and $2 for chips, which I thought was a little pricey at the time but figured it wasn’t a big deal since we were splitting it. Turns out, they gave us a tupperware container of guacamole and an entire, industrial-sized bag of home-made tortilla chips. It was like a dream come true.

After that we walked over to Capitol Hill Books and geeked-out wandering around stacks and stacks of amazing old books. They also have hysterical signs. And try as I might, I can never resist books–I picked up a copy of “The American Presidency” by Clinton Rossiter, published in 1956 (I believe I’ve got a 1959 edition–awesome). I don’t know when I’ll have time to read it, but I read the intro right there in the bookstore and I’m already engrossed.

Finally I wound up in Peregrine Espresso which is a fantastic little coffee shop with pretty lattes AND they have a Twitter account. I’m sold. I’ll be going back. I did a little reading and then biked back to Union Station so I could be a wuss and metro up the hill instead of having to bike up Massachusetts Ave. (it’s rough, okay?!).

Anyway, next up will be two exciting blog posts:

1. A good, thorough recap of Social Justice Camp DC (#sojuca!)
2. A look at the power of public relations as it can be related to the dissident media of early civil rights movements in America and the current news cycle + social media (that’s a little broad and vague yet, still working on it)

Keep your eyes peeled. Also, I’ve got my first story (story, not column–as in I’m playing the “reporter” role this time) coming out in The Eagle this Thursday! You’ll know it’s online when I do.

It’s good to be back.

As I’ve said many times before, Copenhagen was a wonderful experience, but I did miss Washington, D.C., and I missed my friends here more than anything. Today’s been a busy day of reuniting with many of those friends.

For lunch, I met up with several friends in Dupont Circle. We ate quickly, but we must’ve sat and talked for over an hour. Also today was our first chapter meeting of the semester (for my professional business fraternity, Alpha Kappa Psi), and my first chapter meeting since last May, over eight months ago. It’s hard to believe it’s been so long. I saw a lot of the familiar faces–including my little, who sometimes seems like she really could be related to me–as well as a lot of new ones. Since I’ve been gone there’s been an entirely new class of brothers to enter the fraternity and it’s great meeting them as well. Also, my little took a little of her own, making her my grandlittle, and it was amazing to finally meet her in person!

Finally, I spent a little time tonight just hanging out with some of my best friends from this past summer. Even playing Wii with them seems almost foreign, since it’s been almost six months since I’ve held a controller.

Tomorrow is the first day of classes and boy is it a busy first day for me. This semester I’m taking 18 credit hours–six classes worth–and I have five of those classes on Mondays. In some ways I’m dreading the work, but for the most part I’m kind of excited. The classes I have this semester seem interesting, and should make for some interesting lessons and reading. For what it’s worth, they include:

• Public Speaking (probably the one I’m the most excited about)
• Public Relations Writing
• Principles of Organizational Behavior and Management
• Intermediate Statistics (not dreading it, but I know it will probably require the most effort on my part)
• Competition in an Interdependent World (my last general education requirement!)
• Media and the American Mind (an honors colloquium–i.e. special topics–course, should be absolutely fascinating)

I start my internship on Tuesday. Expect a pretty decent blog post on that Tuesday night. I’ve held off talking about it too much just because, to be honest, I don’t really know what to expect. It’s a pretty prestigious internship and I’ve been incredibly lucky to receive this opportunity. I know it’s going to be a great experience, but I want to have some firsthand knowledge before I go into much detail here on the blog. Might need to add a little disclaimer, too–”none of the opinions expressed on this blog are representative of my employer nor it’s clients”.

It’s good to be back. Now time to get to work and kick this semester into gear.